


In This Circle

by neonbiscuits (lavieboheme)



Category: Sherlock BBC
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-08-22
Updated: 2011-08-22
Packaged: 2017-10-22 22:54:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/243485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavieboheme/pseuds/neonbiscuits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>London has Sarah, and so John leaves London for a Tibetan monastery temporarily, deciding to teach first-aid. But the Tibet monastery has Sherlock teaching English and there's warm butter tea and you can really see the stars and oh, John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It’s shaded dark outside when John finally draws the curtains of his consultation office sharply closed. He bends over and locates his briefcase tilted higgledy-piggledy against the left inside of his desk, lifting it up and setting it dully on the top of the general debris strewn over the table. A prescription pad, a spare pad of paper with a rough sketch of the Starship Enterprise in the corner amongst other scribbles, a couple of lightly chewed Staedtler ballpoints rolling around in front of the computer screen that he can see his reflection in, and an empty wooden photo-frame. John doesn’t put anything into his briefcase, but he does trace the edges of the photo-frame gently one last time, downwards along the decorative grooves.

He hesitates, before quietly twisting the knob of the door and leaning cautiously out – sanitary white light spills from below 3 doors down the corridor, obvious even when diluted by the dimly glowing yellow that washes weakly and slowly down the enclosed rectangular space. Sarah’s still busying herself with work, then. Good. No need for the unnecessary good-bye, when both parties know the real farewell had been bidden long ago.

One more figure steps into the filtered sun and sleeting rain that is London, and if this were a movie, the camera would now pan into the lone wooden frame left abandoned on his characterless desk, standing proud and tall even as it leans towards the table at a small, tired angle.

 

\---  
“No, it’s ‘I apologise for being late, Mr. Holmes’, and not I-am-getting-into-so-much-trouble-for-this-little-matter-so-I-will-cower-into-the-side-of-the-door, Chogyal.”

The titters this draws from the assorted students resting cross-legged on the damp floor flits around the tiny classroom, before exiting through the roughly cut windows into the thin East Tibetan air. The teacher, even without making a sound, once again easily overpowers the vacuum of noise in the room. He quirks a side smile at the tiny boy clutching the wooden doorframe, and tilts his head towards the left wall, where there is still space for one more warm body to sit. The boy scrambles into the spot like a small bi-plane gliding roughly into the airfield, clutching his red robes in one hand, and grammar book in the other. The boys around him clap him on the shoulder in solidarity, all of them knowing full well that the bark of their teacher sounds far more threatening than it truly is.

The one man in dark jeans and a dress shirt with rolled-up cuffs under a warm grey cardigan cuts a stunning figure at the fore of the tiny room, bright morning light flooding in from between the wooden window frames brightening him against the whitewashed walls and illuminating the careless curls tumbling over his forehead. “Now, as we are all present” cue stern look at Chogyal and further chuckles from the assembled students “and correct, we shall begin today’s lesson. Grammar today, I’m afraid.”

He pries open the book’s pages delicately, and flicks through them. A mild look of distaste appears, before he slaps the book shut with a palm on each cover. “Despite what Miss Pedantic says, there is little use in knowing the appropriate technical terms of grammar beyond the basic past, present and future tense labels. I myself am unable to expound upon the varied and many uses of the future perfect continuous verb tense – and the one reason is that I have absolutely no idea what sort of tense that label indicates.”

It is a sign of this tall, thin man’s competence that only after 7 months, this class of thirty-odd youth with shaven heads and demeanors that swing from calm to mischievous in the blink of an eye are able to comprehend every word he utters in their presence.

Well, nearly every word.

A clean hand rises out of the general mass of bodies crowded on the floor, and the man at the front hums. “Yeshe, please do be more careful with your candles, you appear to have accidentally knocked 3 over in the past week.”

Yeshe inspects his hand quizzically, flicking away the tiny spot of wax on his elbow. “Yes sir. Uh, I don’t know what is ‘expound.’”, he pronounces carefully, focusing on enunciating accurately and holding the vowels for as long as he had been taught to. This Tibetan boy was obviously on his way to received pronunciation.

“You don’t know what is…?”

“Uh, I don’t know what it is. What it means. Sir.”

“Good on you for asking, then. Well, can anybody explain to Yeshe what ‘expound’ denotes, in the circumstances that I have used it in? Fifty points will be given to Gryffindor,” he prompts in the voice of Professor Snape, and a third of the class grins, catching the reference to the book but not the movie.

But before anybody can volunteer an answer to Professor Snape sans greasy hair, there is a tap at the door and a tall, hunched monk bows himself in. The atmosphere of the class immediately stiffens, a departure from the former carefree mood as the students quickly rise as one in deep respect to their elder monk.

“Mr Holmes, please – I have some informations to tell you.”

The teacher points Mingma, resident lexicographer-in-training to the battered white board hanging loosely on the front wall, retrieving the one marker he owns from his jeans pocket and passing it to him. He then strides towards the door, students parting like waves on a calm sea for him. He shuts the door behind him, and the monk turns to face him.

He looks happy, Holmes’ mind prompts. He finally got some restful sleep last night, and Kalden finally biked down to the village yesterday to retrieve the week’s post, so – some good news must have come through. He cares very much about the monastery’s residents. He probably cares too much. They always do.

He pushes a smile to the front of his mind, and gently corrects him – “Information. Even when used for more than one item, there is still no ‘s’.”

Niyima nods distractedly, and beams a toothy smile. “Next week, there will be a teacher here to teach us first-aid!”

Oh. Somebody feeling over-stimulated by the rigours of the working world, then. Or perhaps – under-stimulated. Unlikely, given the frankly alarming amount of funds the world puts into shallow entertainment to distract them from precisely this. First-aid means he or she would have been a doctor, or they would be teaching English and they wouldn’t be coming here since he was already the resident English teacher – so doctor then, he’s probably just had a turning point in his life – maybe he had his first death. Your standard general practitioner, most likely.

He pushes this to the back of his mind, and it’s his turn to nod distractedly. The class is probably getting on well without him, but Mingma is a cheeky one and odds are that he’s at this very moment imparting the dignified and profound meanings of the word ‘cock’ to the rest of the students.

“Sounds good. What’s his name?” Or maybe ‘homosexual’. Or maybe ‘fuck’. Or maybe –

“Dr John Watson.”


	2. Chapter 2

The tiny plane glided gently into the morning-damp airfield. Inside, the sandy-haired man had his nose squished into the glass of the window, and appeared to be completely at ease in the ridiculously small seat. Next to him, a lanky gentleman was shoehorned into his own seat and looked anything but gentlemanly at that very moment – he had his nose buried in a paper bag, and was making retching noises, looking decidedly green to the gills.

John turns and soothingly rubs the slender back of his neighbour, hunched over in agony and stress. “Hey, it’s alright, Prof,” he soothes. “I already gave you an anti-emetic, you won’t be seeing your lunch coming up the wrong way. C’mon, let’s get you into the fresh mountain air-”

Under the combined efforts of his own power and John’s solid support, the duo struggle out of the plane; the taller of them nearly braining himself on the low exit. The comfort of the chilly wind smacks them right between the eyes, blowing right through their ears, and their shadows play across the clean tarmac as they descend the airstairs behind everybody else. John limps down with the help of his cane, overnight bag slung easily over his shoulders. His companion eases his way down a step at a time, eyes screwed up against the sharp wind and inwardly praying for spaceships with ramps to take over the airline industry in the next few years.

The airport is barely more than a single arrival and departure lounge; cleanly whitewashed with cool cream lights overhead and smooth beige tiles underfoot. John's neighbour on the plane spots his guide waiting at the entrance and after shaking John's hand enthusiastically, wanders off towards him with his carry-on, looking considerably healthier than he had ten minutes ago.

A monk clad in scarlet was sitting awkwardly at one of the many long metal seats that were scattered throughout the large airy space. He sprang to his feet as John approached, having claimed his luggage from the one baggage carousel in the tiny airport – which had, in an apparent stroke of inspiration, been named Baggage Carousel 1.

“Dr Watson?” he grins toothily at John, and reaches for John’s duffel bag. “I’m Mingma, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I trust the journey was pleasant?”

John is slightly shocked by the accuracy and clarity with which this young monk – who couldn’t be more than 16 at most – enunciates his words. He hadn’t heard such a wonderfully posh accent since his tenured Human Biology teacher back at King’s, who’d told young John to blow his nose with a tis-sew and not to make such an is-sew out of the wired skeleton dangling from the ceiling of his office, for Heaven’s sake, what the deuce do you mean it’s improper? By jingo, this is my office and I’ll do what I bloody well like!

There are a couple of sticky, awkward seconds where John berates himself inwardly for making the foolish assumption that a Tibetan monk would never be able to speak English like a native, and with excellent enunciation to boot. He recovers himself almost instantly, and passing his aluminium cane to his left hand, shakes Mingma’s proffered hand warmly with his right. “Yes...yes, call me John, hello. Pleasure to meet you – uh, no worries, it’s really light, I can manage… thanks awfully for coming down to get me.”

They leave the sturdiness of the large concrete building behind on a steadily rocking donkey each, Mingma beaming in the ten o’ clock sun as he bounces along merrily, robes flapping behind him. John edges his ride next to Mingma’s, holding the reins gingerly, and comments cheerfully, “Blimey, your English is the best I’ve ever heard from a teenager.”

The young monk, without turning his head, nods. “Thank you, doctor. My English teacher is the best I’ve ever had, although that’s not saying much, seeing as I’ve never had anybody teaching me English before he came along.” He shrugs, translating to a curious movement as his body followed the up-and-down judder of the donkey. “I was too mischievous, too unattenti- sorry, inattentive in my other Buddhist lessons, and my elders didn’t think I would be worth teaching.”

“How’d you get sent for lessons, then?”

“No idea, all I know is Mr. Holmes insisted every single one of us had to be given a chance to learn English. Most of the elders only attended a couple of lessons, but almost all of us younger monks attend lessons thrice weekly. He’s been teaching us for nearly 7 months now.”

“7 months-!” John yelps, and nearly directs his poor donkey into a tree. “7… bloody hell, do you know we’ve got students learning English for 7 years, and after all that the only thing they can say is ‘I ain’t bovvered?’”

“Well, Mr. Holmes is good. He’s very good.”

There is silence from next to him as John tries to absorb all this. 7 months and he produces a BBC news anchor? Good lord! That’s brilliant, this Holmes guy sounds brilliant, I hope I get to meet him…

“If it’s any consolation, doctor, he once made me read this… book called Twilight as a punishment for misbehaving in class. That was…not so good.”

“...You don’t say.”

\---

“Mingma, can I borrow your torchlight? I ran out of batteries last night and I haven’t had the time to go into town and buy some more lately.”

John Watson is quietly impressed – the boy had barely stepped over the threshold into the tiny room, making little to no noise in his soft black shoes before the figure sitting at a single wooden desk and mulling over papers had issued the question.

“How did you-” Mingma begins, before thinking the better of continuing the sentence. “Sorry, I’ve lent it to Wangdak. He dropped his last week and it cracked, but he’s afraid of the dark. And of Niyima’s scolding.”

“And of getting scolded by Niyima,” the mop of hair bent over his work corrects absent-mindedly, scratching another sentence into the sheet of paper in front of him.

“Sorry sir, and of getting scolded by Niyima. And…what’s wrong with the electric light?” Mingma says as he goes on tiptoe in an attempt to scrutinise the upside-down writing on the pad.

“I require artificial light for an experiment I wish to conduct later. I don’t like to tap into the monastery’s electricity; they can scarcely afford to pay the utilities bill for the two extra light bulbs I had them install in this classroom. I prefer to use battery-powered devices.”

John, seeing Mingma tilt his head 30 degrees to the left to read the inverted scribbles, clears his throat and hopes he doesn’t sound too forward. “Uh, here. Use mine-” He bends down to retrieve his old Army-issue right-angle torchlight from a zippered pocket in his duffel bag and holds it out.

“Oh.” The mop of hair finally looks up to reveal a sharply defined face, with strong eyebrows above pale grey eyes, accentuated and framed within thick black eyelashes. They regard John with an unusually high level of concentration; so much that they might have been analysing his every atom with suspicion, were it not for the presence of a small smile lingering on the right corner of his lips.

“Thank you.” Fingers with the slenderness of a pianist's, the concealed strength of a violinist's, the dexterity of a magician's and the tender precision of a chemist's reach for the unit in John’s hands. One imperfectly manicured thumb flicks carefully, and the room is flooded with steady illumination: down to the small whiteboard hanging lopsidedly behind the battered wooden desk, and into the forgotten corners that exist below normal eye-level. One-half of a mouth lifts in satisfaction, followed by the words: “Afghanistan or Iraq?”


	3. Chapter 3

\---  
John has never been so completely and utterly floored before in his entire life – save for one other time. Nevertheless, he’s so floored right now that if he were any more so he’d run out of floor and end up floundering knee-deep in the soil amongst the building foundations.  
Feeling a bit dizzy, he opens his mouth – and then closes it again. He then opens it again – and then –

“Sorry?”

“Which was it, Afghanistan or Iraq?” Sherlock patiently returns, still scribbling.

Mingma smirks at him from across the room, and it strikes John that his jaw has been hanging entirely unhinged for the past minute or so. He shuts it promptly and prays that flies are scarce here in this mountainous region.

“Afganistan,” he says slowly, still reeling from the shock. “And you’re only the second person to have asked me that, ever. How did you-?”

The English teacher suddenly looks a bit appalled but before John can say anything more the door squeaks open and a rather fat monk trips in.

“Doctor!” he cries exuberantly, cheeks glowing healthily as he catches his breath. “You come – meet Mr. Holmes?”

Holmes scowls at the blatant disregard for his revered English language. “Gephel,” he says patiently. “It’s ‘you have come to meet Mr. Holmes’ – and call me Sherlock, actually,” he adds to John, as an afterthought.

“Ah, Mr. Holmes – my English, it is not so good – but I am indeed apologise –”

“Apologetic…”

“Apollygetink, but you know what I say – you learn the Tibetan, then I will come take class. Everyday!”

Gephel beams, and John can’t quite resist the urge to smile inwardly. London had rather proven to be the textbook example of Thomas Hobbes’ opinion on the nature of man, and the good-natured kindliness of the elder monk was a welcome glass of cold milk. Jean Jacques Rousseau could have been right after all, he decided. Cities made people hate other people – or perhaps people hating other people made people hate other people…

A little ‘pfft!’ escapes Sherlock, but thankfully he knows which battles to fight and which ones to concede. “Tell you what – I’ll show Dr. Watson around, and you’ll show up for my standard lesson tomorrow. Fair deal?” he offers, already flipping the pages of his pad shut before standing and leaning over to gently flick the left ear of the still squinting Mingma. “Everybody has the capacity to be bad and good,” he cracks.  
John smiles, until he realises how uncanny that statement is, in providing an answer to his thoughts. If he didn’t know better, he’d say that Sherlock was actually answering his thoughts –

“Good try, Mr. Holmes! Good try! Gephel beams. “But I come here is to tell you that you will bring doctor around, so now you will bring doctor around, and I see you later for eating food!” He bows to them and positively scurries out of the classroom. Mingma follows him out, but not before pointing at Sherlock and mouthing, “Yea, he always does that” to John, then saluting them both in a cheeky exit.

“I will bring the THE doctor around, Gephel, THE doctor!” Sherlock hollers after him before giving it up as a bad job and stooping to peer under the sheaf of messily stacked paper. John wants to laugh at the absurdity of all this, and at himself for thinking that Sherlock is a mind-reader (how did he know about Afghanistan, though?) – it’s like a particularly ridiculous episode of Monty Python and the Ministry of Syntax Abuse. His head, though – his head kind of feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton candy and then pushed out into the sun to melt. He puts it down to the jet lag.

“We’re rooming together, did you know?” A voice from underneath the desk says, and Sherlock crawls out fluidly, brandishing a marker and dusting his knees off. He smiles the smile of a puddle-jumping kid, and pushes the marker into his jeans pocket. “I’m glad, at least you’ll be a decent room-mate…”

John’s never felt this light-headed since he did his first aerial drop, and now he feels like he’s doing an aerial drop whilst simultaneous riding a suspended roller coaster. The edges of his vision are tinged slightly damp, and his eyes feel a bit fuzzy and his mouth suddenly tastes rather disgusting. “How’d you figure?” He mumbles tiredly, leaning a bit more weight on his cane, and decides that after this, he’s going to have a good long nap, where he will specifically not dream of Sarah and her clean, soft smell, and the way her hair fans out on a pillow just after a shower when it’s still slightly damp.

“Well,” Holy crap, feels like it’s started drizzling in both his left and right brains. “You’ve just been invalided home…” Fuzzy eyeballs, did somebody knit them sweaters? “…military service in Afghanistan…” He feels all mangy and stretched thin like Nutella on white bread, and oh no it’s stuffy like the inside of a whale again, and – “…obviously fairly good compa– John? John!”

Sherlock starts forward – dropping his beloved marker on the floor in his haste – and just manages to catch John as he hits the floor all crumpled up; lowering him to the ground gently with warmth and solidity that surprises even Sherlock himself.


	4. Chapter 4

John dreams of smashed up pink candy floss.

He dreams of dark marker ink creeping up gently worn floorboards, barely-there heat seeping through walls, and happiness known by a different name in a different language.

He dreams in a bubble, he dreams in colour and he dreams in sound.

He dreams in life.

\---  
Sherlock lived in a bubble. All things go and all things grow, and Sherlock Holmes went but didn’t get to grow. He grew roots in the wrong places, sought breaths for the wrong reasons and then the bubble burst when his breaths grew too loud and too deep.

Mycroft Holmes sighed, rolled both his eyes and his shirtsleeves up simultaneously and glided into the shallow end. “Learn to paddle,’ he said to the shivering Sherlock, before hoisting him out gently. “Learn to paddle, even if you can swim. It makes swimming all the more enjoyable.”

So Mycroft brought Sherlock to another pool, where the water only came up to his knees, and threw him in. There weren’t any bubbles there, though.

\---  
“It’s scratchy…” is John’s first thought. He wakes swathed in warm rolls of blanket, head pillowed on a soft cushion.

“Ugh. My head.” is his second.

The room is small, smaller than that of the classroom he recalls stepping foot in what – 3 hours ago? 4? It’s mostly dim, and although the only wind is from the 20 by 20cm open window at the wall perpendicular to his position, the room is awfully cold. John knows, because he’s feeling the warmth you get from huddling in warmth on spectacularly cold days.

He mumbles something incoherent and sits up in bed, the blankets sitting up with him. A face from below him looks up sharply, and then relaxes into a smile.

“Welcome back,” Sherlock raises an eyebrow in accompaniment to this short speech, before once again raising his torch and shining it down onto the thin paperback in his lap. He’s seated cross-legged on top of what John vaguely recognises as the sleeping bag he brought, all the way from Afghanistan and then all the way to London. It’s come a long way. Sherlock’s flipping a tiny corner of the well-worn page down, and unfolding his legs, at the end of which are thick grey wool socks. They continue out of his jeans like rubber on sharp edges, and are almost the same shade of the cardigan he’s donned over his shirt. It’s too dark to tell; pink looks grey in lack of light and so do blue, black and green. The collar of his shirt sticks out over the neck of the cardigan, and lends an absurdly formal air to the whole thing.

The wind ruffles John’s hair lightly as he clutches the blankets around him, and it occurs to him with a soft snap that Sherlock’s not got anything to use as a quilt, or cover.

“No matter,” Sherlock says as if in reply. He’s already standing up, and peering into the shelves on the opposite side of the room. “You should keep my blankets for tonight, at least. It’s common in high altitudes that the lower partial pressure of the atmosphere and the resulting lower partial pressure of oxygen reduces the amount of oxygen available to bind reversibly to your blood. Lower oxygen, slower rate of essential functions performed by cells, thus reduced ability of athletic activities one can carry out. Including standing, of course.”

“I did read about that, but I didn’t know the effect would be so...powerful. I mean, it’s not that high up-”

“Possibly also fatigue incurred from sleep debt; no doubt the flight here did not allow for the best of bedtimes. Also, jet lag.”

“I’ll just breathe more, then.” John finally finds the beginning of the tightly wrapped blankets, and begins to peel himself out of them.

“Ugh, breathing. Breathing’s boring. No, don’t get up-” Sherlock had retrieved a tiny bottle about the size of his thumb from the rear of the top shelf. There was a paper label around the middle, and Sherlock sticks a tiny straw in the top, puncturing the aluminium wrapping with one go. “Here, drink this.” He pads softly over to John, who’d nearly got his foot untangled from the covers.

“Whatsit...?”

“A concoction. Not of my own making, admittedly, but I experienced...similar effects to you when I first arrived. This helped considerably.”

“Promise it’s not date rape?” John jokes lightly as he takes the tiny bottle from Sherlock, who quirked a tiny smile in response.

“Stimulates iron and haemoglobin production, and widens blood vessels. It might increase the uptake of oxygen to your cells, but it probably won’t knock you out.”

It tastes like sweet dew, and all it took was one quick suck to polish it all off. John leans over the bed and drops the empty glass bottle into the dented metal bin, while Sherlock settles himself back down on the sleeping bag with his paperback and torch. John suddenly feels guilty.

“You know, this is...your bed. Your room, actually – I’m the guest, I should be the one kipping on the sleeping bag, here, let’s swap-” He’s just about to swing his legs over the side of the admittedly rather comfortable bed, before Sherlock sighs and puts his torch down with clunk on the concrete floor.

“John. You’re an army doctor who’s just been invalided home from Afghanistan; right as your therapist might have been in thinking that your limp is psychosomatic, they obviously overlooked the fact that the circumstances of the original injury were traumatic, which caused your leg to be affected – psychologically, and not nervously. From the way you hold yourself when you stand, a logical guess would be your back, or your shoulder. It would do either of these places no good for you to spend a night on the hard floor, especially when the thin atmosphere has you feeling poorly. Just stay on the bloody bed and go to sleep,” he adds for good measure, picking up his torch again.

John blinks a couple of times, before saying slowly, “That is what my therapist believes. How in the name of God did you-”

“Sleep, John.” A note of impatience creeps into his voice. “Or I’ll shine the torch at the bottom of my chin and pull ridiculous faces until you agree to go back to sleep.”

John grins despite himself and throws the thickest blanket down. “I’m not planning to have another full-time English patient until I’m actually back in England.”

He then turns and sighs into the gently wrapped cocoon of covers, snuffling back into sleep slowly. The only sound for a few minutes is that of the wind whistling outside cheerfully. Sherlock reads on stoically, turning a couple of pages while he absently keeps watch on John’s breathing. Just when he thought John’d dozed off again-

“You’re awf’lly nice, Sherl’ck”, is mumbled from the bed next to him. And John falls softly into a dream.

“I haven’t really anyone to be nice to for a long while, now,” is all Sherlock wants to say as the wind flips to the next page for him.


	5. Chapter 5

It’s nearly 1am when Sherlock sets the book aside; folding a tiny dog-ear in the corner he’s stopped at before he does so. It goes back on the wobbly wooden shelf, and he softly treads over to the window. It’s the second Wednesday of the 5th month of the year and so he leans over the sill, pivoting on his stomach until his head and arms disappear from sight…and then tilts back again, clutching a thick stack of papers tightly bound together by twine, as retrieved from the alcove outside the window.

Long words, complicated-looking words that go along the lines of ‘bioavailability’ and ‘nanoparticles’ are printed on cream paper which smells vaguely of sheep, but then again, Sherlock thinks to himself, after enough time in this place everything begins to smell like sheep to the non-discerning nose. He sniffs.

There’s a sharp 5/11 scrawled boldly on the top corner of the cover sheet in black marker, and settling himself into a lotus position on the sleeping bag, Sherlock clamps the torch between his teeth and begins to untie the twine.   
\---

It’s a little just past 7am when John sits up with a jolt, his t-shirt soaked through with his own sweat.

The blankets are pooled around the end of the bed, kicked off in the middle of the night by restless feet. The room is hollowed out by mellow sun, with no traces of the previous night’s chilling wind. The air feels sweetly cool but not overly so, and the calm disposition of the world smiles down on him through the window.

But all this is lost on John as he works his way through his own laboured breathing – one, twice, three times - then he clamps a hand over his own mouth to stifle the deep harsh sounds of a person clinging to reality for all he’s worth. He can feel his dirty blonde hair is sticking out haphazardly like a dandelion (time for a trim, but Sarah liked it this wa- oh god.)

A dandelion. When he was young he’d read the way a ravenous elephant consumed leaves and branches; more than often not bothering to sit up in a proper position against the bedrest before he started reading. As a result he was the butt of his sister’s jokes about him ‘reading while he prays’ for a rather annoying month, but truth be told, he missed those days.

He can still recall, rather vividly, a story-book character that had to escape from up a bean-stalk in the land of giants. She’d grabbed a dandelion drifting lazily by and settled herself on top of it, moving through the world whilst watching the world move around her.

John can’t recall how she got off the dandelion head now, come to think of it. Would she have wanted to? It was the magical realist version of his recurring dream in which he sat on the moon, cross-legged, and watched the Earth revolve and rotate, through 60 minutes, 24 hours, 4 seasons, and a handful of years. He was above it all, and being above something trumps having to live your life dragged down by an almost-something.

He curls up in the nest of bedclothes - wide awake but not wanting to either dream or drift - while his palm on the rough wall is all that keeps him anchored to the here and now.  
\---

John takes his breakfast to the central courtyard, a monk having softly knocked on his door a little past seven thirty. He’d greeted John with a shy “zhashi deleg” and handed him a slightly chipped enamel bowl filled to the three-quarter mark, now resting warm and heavy in John’s right hand. A red mug, this time almost full to the brim, is held out reverently to him and the monk is gone after a deep bow, disappearing down the cold corridor, robes barely swishing in the stiff air.

A battered metal spoon looking as if its near-retirement nestles in roasted barley, and John identifies it as having been mixed with cheese, sniffing as he walks down the cement steps. It’s like something out of a story yet again and the plastic mug of piping hot tea he carries in his other hand makes it no less so; the bright red exterior decorated with unidentifiable children’s characters. Unidentifiable, yet clearly meant for children all the same. John supposes he’ll have to pass them his regiment mug for tea in the mornings – this is clearly somebody else’s mug and he feels like he’s imposing.  
A man on a dandelion head.

\---  
There’s a circular stone table with matching stools in the courtyard corner, the entire set looking as if it had been transported out of a rustic Chinese family drama set in ancient times- where a king’s word was the promise of a man second only to the gods. John sets his breakfast down and tries to drag a stool closer to the table, realising that it’s entirely made of solid stone and that solid stone looks a lot lighter than it seems.

He succeeds when he gets behind the blasted thing and nudges it forward, putting all his weight behind the slowly shifting stool. It drags on the floor and the sound of friction scythes through the calm, almost-quiet chanting emanating from the huge wooden hall in the distance to his left. It seems almost unholy and John mutters “Sorry,” before realising there’s nobody around to hear him anyway. It does make him feel better nonetheless and a sip of tea seems in order while he lowers himself onto the stool and holy mug of tea with two sugars in, the view from the corner takes what little oxygenated breath he had away.

When John’d ridden up the hill (felt more like a mountain) to the monastery with Mingma, they had their backs to the direction of the village with the tiny airport and the sun was in their eyes. Now he rises and exhales at the magnificent sight of a sun riding low in the dip between two neighbouring hills (more like mountains), with nothing apart from the village but green fields as he could see and even those green fields stood in neat elevated rows, like a mile-wide staircase built for the sole purpose of allowing celestial beings to ascend upon hilltops.

It’s all ‘trying to work out where the green ends and the light bends’ for the next ten minutes and while he’s wishing the eye was a camera, taking pictures to be stored in the hard-drive of the mind for future viewing, Sherlock Holmes drops into the seat next to him, setting a dark brown leather satchel on the cool stone surface of the table.

Sherlock’s in a black windbreaker today, which swings aside to reveal yesterday night’s shirt (which he’d slept in) below a short blue scarf. He looks slightly worn, although that could be from the way his uncombed dark hair ruffles when the morning wind ghosts through it. He doesn’t say anything in greeting, just stretches languorously, (like a cat in the sun on a hill for the gods) and John doesn’t say anything in reply, just stares and bites his lip.

The genre of this story doesn’t seem to be getting any easier to classify.


	6. Chapter 6

That afternoon, John starts on his series of classes, beginning with basic CPR. There's thirty monks sitting in the room, with peeling white paint stretched from end to end. Gephel is the resident medic and so he stands in the corner of the classroom, translating for those who've had the fortune not to be on the receiving end of Sherlock's English classes. It's half-past four and the weather is such that even at this time of the day, it's rather chilly.

He opens with resuscitation techniques for untrained personnel - after calling a young monk to the front to demonstrate, he explains the two steps each and every one of them should know. Tilting their head sideways to ensure there's nothing blocking their airway, and and putting their heads to chests; listening for breaths.

The monks get on with this fairly easy, even if its a rather humorous sight - seeing fifteen normally dignified monks lying on their sides and breathing exaggeratedly through open mouths.

Chest compressions take a bit longer, as it turns out that quite a few of the younger ones are ticklish. An enterprising youth named Shamar brings the class to a standstill for five minutes as he digs his fingers into his partner's armpits, and there's a mass tickling session ongoing for ten minutes as his surrounding friends copy his movements and the older monks cluck disapprovingly.

There is but the one AED in the monastery, gathering dust in the confines of Gephel's room, so John dismisses them after the chest compressions. They file out in a swirl of orange cloth and grimy bare feet, the boys chattering amongst themselves excitedly. John's following Gephel out the room when suddenly a dark figure looms up behind him, and he turns to find Sherlock in a long black coat with the collar turned up. It stops midway down his lower thigh, and John can't quite help but notice he looks rather nice in a pair of jeans with a dress shirt; scarlet this time.

"I thought we might take out dinner outdoors," Sherlock opens steadily, after several seconds of John staring wide-eyed at him. He holds up a plastic container of sandwiches and a flask. "Teacher on teacher."

\---

"Nice coat. Who'd you have to kill for it?"

Sherlock laughs, but doesn't answer as he sets the containers down on the grassy incline next to them.

They're halfway down the hill the monastery is situated on; the sun is in a 5 o' clock position for London, yet John's sturdy watch informs him it's nearly seven. The wind ruffles noiselessly over long stems of grass and the occasional woody flower. John reaches over for a sandwich, wondering idly how the monastery has managed to procure tuna. The white bread's cut into triangled halves and as he picks it up between two fingers, a huge chunk of mayonnaise and tuna droops out the sides.

"Oh, Jesus." John stares in mock horror at the two slices of mayonnaise-coated bread he's holding. "Did you make them yourself or something?" He tries to keep the smirk off his face, but barely succeeds as Sherlock's lips pull into a tight line.

"Perhaps."

And then they're laughing together, side-by-side on a patch of sun-brightened green as the world goes about their business below them. And then Sherlock leans over and presses his lips to John's slowly, as a hesitant arm winds his way around John back and rubs his spine with gentle fingers. John shuts his eyes and brings a hand up to Sherlock's cheek, soothing the wind-chapped skin and cautiously brushing the pads of his fingers up the finely defined cheekbones. He exhales softly, then pulls back from the warmth, taking a deep breath.

"I'm not ready for this. I'm sorry." He swallows in disappointment, unsure who exactly he means it to be directed at. "I...I can't give you everything right now. It'd be unfair to you."

Sherlock blinks under long lashes, taken aback. "I don't need everything." He sits back, unwinding his arm from around John's waist and John feels as if he could fall off the hill and into the chaos below. "I don't pretend to be a good person at heart, John. I wouldn't be here if I were," he murmurs softly, apologetically.

It makes no sense to John, as he tilts his head left and flushes when Sherlock catches him looking.

"Whatever you want, John. No strings attached. You could go back to London when you're done here, and nothing will have changed on your part. What would truly be unfair would be me asking you for more than that, me, alone on this lonesome pinnacle, forcing the first contact from home he's had in ages into more than that. No. What you're willing to give me would suffice to make me happy," he whispers softly, the wind almost stealing the words from his mouth.

John resolutely refuses to answer at all, folding his arms over his chest and gazing distractedly at the descending shadows of the hills.

Sherlock glares hatefully at his own badly-made sandwiches.

\--

Sherlock doesn't press the issue any further after that day. It's bad enough John shooting him furtive glances when he thinks he isn't looking; but the constant want in the bones of his body whenever he curls up alone on his thin mattress just about takes the cake. Curse John Watson and his finely-developed morals! He thinks, curling and uncurling the restless fingers of his dominant hand into a ball textured with dry skin on the inside.

The worst thing is that he's not sure, he thinks the intensity of the emotion stems from his lack of equal contact (everyone else is afraid of him here in some way, whether from the stories surrounding his arrival or from his esoteric manner). He's being selfish about his own needs and he doesn't like that he's okay with that. No wonder he hasn't had a friend in ages.

"I haven't had a friend in ages," he tells John so three days later. John is lying on the mattress fiddling with a Rubik's cube, as he'd insisted they take it in turns to sleep on the bed. This gives him pause as he twists a section sideways to align yellow with red, on the faded device Sherlock had confiscated from a young student who was playing with it his class.

"Ages?"

"Ages," Sherlock confirms, hands slipping into that easy manner of prayer, with thumbs propped under his chin. He leans forward, aligning palm with palm and letting them rub over each other. "They're all wary of me, even though they try not to let it affect their dealings with me. But well, it's not so bad- England was much the same. The only difference is the language and the cultural barrier. But the unease never leaves."

"You don't make me uneasy." Strange, Sherlock detects no trace of malign or deception in John's voice. "Really?" He lifts his eyes in intrigue, popping up perpendicular to the bed. He flops over the bed side, deliberately invading John's personal space. "Really?" He repeats in a lower decibel, watching the driving frequency of the deep bass strike resonance within John.

John looks up into his bright eyes, and sighs in resignation. "That day, when you said that it wouldn't mean anything - did you-?"

"I meant it."

"Then come down here, because you've begun to mean something to me."


End file.
